


Trade You Places

by blackfish



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Bodyswap, Humor, Jealousy, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackfish/pseuds/blackfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer wakes up being Ryan and he has to deal with Brendon being all lovey-dovey with him the whole day. (Prompt from anon_lovefest.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trade You Places

When they wake up in the middle of the night in the dark hotel room, their eyes immediately meet and Ryan says, “this is so fucked up, Spencer,” and yes, Spencer really does have to agree because that’s Spencer’s voice that Ryan’s using - his voice, in his body, in his blankets, in his hotel bed. Fucked up doesn’t even touch that.

“Maybe,” Ryan whispers, as if the sound of his voice coming out of Spencer’s throat is freaking him out, “maybe it’s all just a really messed up dream and we’ll wake up normal.”

Spencer nods emphatically and shuts his eyes tight. He doesn’t want to use Ryan’s voice. He breathes deeply and forces his - Ryan’s - body to relax. It will all be fine in the morning.

***

Only, it’s not. He knows this before he even opens his eyes. He knows mostly because of the overwhelming sense of wrongness, but also because of the way that Brendon is burrowing his face into Spencer’s - Ryan’s - neck. No, yeah. Maybe mostly that one. He also kind of has to go to the bathroom. He doesn’t want to think about it.

“Brendon,” he says, not even opening up his eyes, but pushing Brendon’s face away with the flat of his hand. “Sleeping. Gross. God.”

“Ryan Ross, you will succumb to my charms one of these days,” Brendon says, cheerily enough, with a lick to emphasize his point. His thing for Ryan was intense while it lasted but Spencer thinks he’s mostly over it these days, enough to joke about it anyway, but maybe not enough to give up entirely.

“What charms,” Ryan says from the other bed and yawns. “This is kind of awesome from over here, for the record. I kind of hope it _is_ permanent.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Spencer says, opening his eyes to glare at his own face. It’s almost smiling and it’s so vertigo-inducing _creepy_ that he looks away and focuses on trying to elbow Brendon in the gut. Unfortunately, the blanket that is thankfully protecting his virtue from overly friendly bandmates is also working pretty much like a net. He’s trapped.

“Yeah, watch it, Spencer,” Brendon says, waving a threatening finger towards the other bed. It doesn’t matter that Brendon doesn’t have any idea what they’re talking about; he often doesn’t. He rolls with it. “You watch it, or you’re next!”   He’s not. He’s never woken up - before today, that is - with Brendon’s face mashed into his neck. Not that, you know, whatever. That’s solely Ryan territory, and a couple times, Jon’s. Brendon gets bored of his vicious pointing and drops the hand, ever so smoothly turning it into a full body snuggle.

“Ryan Ross, you are my very favourite,” Brendon says contentedly into Spencer’s - Ryan’s - shoulder. Spencer growls a tiny bit. Ryan laughs, the bastard.

“It’s Spencer, you idiot,” he says, trying to escape from Brendon’s clinging limbs and the net-blanket. “ _Spencer._ ”

“What about him?” Brendon asks, doing his best to be a pain in the ass. “He doesn’t mind, right Spencer?”

Which, argh, yes. He really does mind. He finally gets free and stomps off toward the bathroom. He probably looks about fourteen doing it, only, no - he’s Ryan, so.. twelve, maybe. He doesn’t care; this one is Ryan’s to explain. It’s probably his fault, anyway. It certainly isn’t Spencer’s.

“That’s actually Spencer,” he hears Ryan say, no intonation whatsoever. “Ryan in here. Hi.”

Spencer slams the bathroom door on Brendon’s dazed, “What.” Gonna get way too close to his best friend’s dick now, yep, awesome.

When he gets out of the bathroom (just.. let’s not talk about it, okay), Brendon is sitting on the bed across from Ryan-in-Spencer’s-body, and they’re staring at each other.

“This is way too surreal,” Brendon says.

“Yeah, you try living it,” Spencer says. He doesn’t know where, or how, really, to stand. It’s awkward. He’s cold and he wants to be back in bed but he doesn’t want to climb back in with Brendon. He sits down at the foot of Ryan’s bed.

“Seriously, so surreal,” Brendon says, staring at Spencer now. Spencer makes a face back at him, reflexively. He’s not used to the sustained attention.

“I want breakfast,” Ryan says. “First a shower -- hmm. Actually. Let’s just go get breakfast.”  
 “Agreed,” Spencer says, quickly and jumps up to rifle through Ryan’s suitcase for pants.

***

 The hotel restaurant does well enough for breakfast, but when Brendon shows up from collecting Jon, Spencer suddenly regrets sitting across from Ryan if it means that Brendon is going to be burrowing into his side all through breakfast.

“It’s _Spencer_ ,” he reminds him.

“I know that,” Brendon says, like he’s insulted. It’s not Spencer’s fault that he’s obviously slow.

“Wow, you’re really in there, huh? That is so creepy,” Jon comments, and then nods to the waitress in thanks when she leaves them a full carafe of coffee.

“Sadly,” Spencer agrees.

“Hey, my body’s excellent,” Ryan says, not looking up from his phone.

“Could be worse,” Jon says, “you could have woken up in Brendon’s body.”

“That would be so amazing,” Brendon says, bouncing. “I’m totally jealous.” And then Spencer could have entirely different but still entirely unpleasant dick-touching dilemmas. So amazing, he’s sure.

He and Ryan ignore Brendon, but Jon gamely humours him. “Maybe we’re up next, buddy.”

“Fingers crossed!” Brendon says, and he actually crosses them, too. On both sides. Spencer presses his leg into Brendon’s, just to lever himself some space. Brendon beams.

***

Back on the bus, Spencer has his headphones on, laptop open and music up loud. He’s researching body-switching but so far it seems to be mostly porn related. It’s not a hardship. Heh, hardship. Porn. He glances up to get an idea of where everyone is in relation to the porn on his screen and jumps a little when he sees Brendon staring at him, fairly intensely, from the small kitchenette.

Spencer pushes the headphones back off his head and slams the laptop closed. “It’s still me in here, you know,” he snaps.

“I know!” Brendon protests, like he doesn’t have a fairly excessive history of staring at Ryan for hours at a time. Approximately.

Spencer goes to conclude his research in the bathroom where he can’t be bothered. It’s cramped and it kind of smells like sewage tank but a door beats a curtain that will either stay closed at his head or his feet, but never both. He just needs some alone time, all right. Living on a bus is not ideal in a lot of ways, and it’s the little tiny insignificant things that usually add up to being far more of a problem than the obvious big ones.

At any rate, his research ends up to be absolutely useless. For practical body-switching purposes, anyway. His research also ends up completely traumatizes him not four minutes later when he remembers that he’s not in his actual own body.

(Which was not something that he thought was actually possible to _forget_ , but porn is a curious thing. The rare lack of Brendon in his immediate personal space probably helped, too.)

***

“What do you want for lunch?” Brendon asks, standing entirely too close. “Because, like, which wins out - preference or biology, you know?”

“What are you talking about?” Brendon’s eyes are pretty much never leaving his and Spencer doesn’t have a problem with eye contact or anything but - there are _limits_.

“Well, you know, if Ryan hated pickles, but you loved them--”

“I like pickles,” Ryan interrupts.

“Me too,”Jon adds, waving vaguely at where Brendon is standing closest to the miniature fridge. “Do we actually have pickles? Brendon?”

“Pickles would be so good right now,” Ryan says.

“I know, right?” Jon says, bumping shoulders with Ryan. “Brendon?”

“ _So if you liked them, and Ryan didn’t,_ ” Brendon says, only acknowledging Jon and Ryan by the volume and clarity with which he says it, “do you think it would make a difference? Like, is it just some kind of psychological association or like, are Ryan’s taste buds just messed up on the subject of pickles?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my taste buds,” Ryan says.

“Did a pickle hurt you in the past, Ryan?” Jon says, all attentive concern. “You can tell me, it’s okay. They can’t hurt you ever again.”

“I think everyone here likes pickles,” says Spencer, finally. “Even you.”

“That’s not really helping, Spencer!”

“I don’t know, Brendon,” Spencer says to the earnest expression that Brendon is milking for all it’s worth. “What does it matter, anyway?” He shrugs. “Breakfast tasted fine.”

“I thought it was kind of weird,” Ryan says.

“That’s because you put syrup on everything,” Spencer says, poking his own body’s arm. Ryan still flinches dramatically and rubs at it, though. Weird.

“I was going to make you a sandwich,” Brendon says, waving the bread bag to get back the attention he so briefly lost.

“I can make my own sandwiches, Brendon,” Spencer says. “It’s me, seriously! _Spencer_.”

“I get it!” Brendon snaps, dropping the bread bag back onto the table and adds “ _Spencer!_ ” for good measure on his way past them and back to the lounge.

“Pickles for science?” Jon asks, but no one really goes for it. Which is a shame because Spencer really kind of wants a pickle now.

***

“What if we don’t switch back in time?” Spencer asks later, squeezing into Ryan’s bunk and pulling the curtain mostly shut. They sit side by side and by unspoken agreement, they avoid looking at each other. They have a show in a little less than seven hours. 

“Then someone will have a family emergency,” Ryan says. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I’m not sure this is something we can just figure out,” Spencer says. “I mean. Where would we even start?”

“Wait,” Ryan says, turning to face him. “The handshake?” They invented a secret handshake when Spencer was nine. It doesn’t work. It’s still awesome, though.

“Balls,” Spencer says.

***

Brendon gets over his snit, anyway, because he’s curled right into Spencer’s side while they watch some seriously disturbing anime movie. Spencer seriously has no idea what’s going on and he wishes he could reach his laptop and save what’s left of his brain but: Brendon, and all. Seriously, there’s a time and a place for anime and he had that time already today. The place was the bathroom, and he’s still traumatised. No matter how much him and Ryan don’t tend to keep secrets? That one is never coming out. Not that anything happened, because it didn’t. 

“You can’t reach it,” Brendon says, pushing the laptop another inch further away with his toe.

“I can’t reach it because you’re a dick,” Spencer says.

“You love me,” Brendon says, and squishes his face into Spencer’s bony Ryan-shoulder.

“Quit touching me in places,” Spencer says, but he doesn’t mean it.

“Oh, I’ll touch your places,” Brendon says with a leer.

“Ryan’s places,” Spencer corrects and tries again for the laptop. Fuck this shit, really. He has never been touched this much by Brendon Urie in a week, never mind a single morning. 

“You guys are really bad at watching movies,” Jon says from the floor.

“That means shut the fuck up,” Ryan translates. 

“Hold on,” Brendon says, digging fingers into Spencer and levering himself up to look at Ryan. “Have you guys tried kissing? Kissing always fixes this shit!”

Spencer just puts his head in his hands because really. What else can he do.

“I didn’t want to say it, but,” Jon says, and nods in agreement. Of course he does.

“Neither of us are frogs,” Ryan says while Brendon is singing “K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” like an asshole.

“Arguably,” Jon says, gesturing at Spencer - Ryan - Ryan’s body, whatever, “the eyes are a little froggy.”

“Hey,” Ryan says, in addition to a fairly ruthless kick. Jon smashes his face into Spencer’s laptop trying to roll out of the way. Everyone loses.

“It’s the simplest answer you guys!” Brendon argues. “Occam’s Razor, right? Do it!”

And kissing Ryan is not something that should ever be done outside of that one confusing time in their adolescence but desperate times, etc etc. So they do that thing. There is cheering. It does nothing, as Spencer had pretty much figured it wouldn’t. Brendon gets punched. Ryan goes back to pretending that the movie is the most interesting thing in the room. Actually, Spencer can get behind that one. The movie is way less awkward.

***

Spencer meets Ryan back at the venue once Ryan’s done with his adventures in manufacturing a Smith family emergency. They figured it’d just be easier to do it with Spencer’s voice and therefore not have to explain anything. They’ll have to, if it goes on much longer but for now: no fucking way. 

Spencer wanted to be the one faking sick because he might be out of practise but he was honestly incredible at faking sick back in high school. In the end they agreed that Spencer had way more immediate family to create a convincing emergency with, though, so Ryan got that job. Spencer still has a very convincing gonna-barf face, though, and he never gets to use it. Maybe next photo shoot, oh yeah, that’s a plan.

“I can’t believe we’re actually going to cancel a show,” Spencer says, “this blows so much.”

“We should have planned for this eventuality,” Ryan says.

“Yeah, I’m not learning the guitar, though,” Spencer says. “And we’re not staying like this and this is _never happening again_.”

“Agreed,” Ryan says. “It’s making you weird.”

“How is it not making you weird?” Spencer asks, because really, Ryan is either exactly the same or faking Spencer perfectly. Spencer feels like a giant klutzy pile of limbs; it’s really unfair.

“It’s only weird for you because of the Brendon thing,” Ryan says, because he can’t leave a thing unsaid.

“I’m pretty sure this would be weird no matter what,” Spencer says, making Ryan’s face make faces and wiggling his freaky long fingers.

“But Brendon makes it weirder.”

“Brendon makes everything weirder,” Spencer says, deflecting. They find a picnic table set up for smokers and they claim it in the name of Panic.

“You know, you work pretty hard at making yourself believe that he’s not into you,” Ryan says.

“He’s not,” Spencer protests. “That’s just, you know,” he says, gesturing at the place where Brendon would be attached to his side if he were there, “your thing. He doesn’t do that to me, he never has.”

“Because he’s careful around you,” Ryan argues. “He’s always been careful around you.”

Spencer considers it while he keys their name into the picnic table… that might actually be true, maybe, because Brendon has been mauling the shit out of him all day but it’s really actually nowhere close to the regular Ryan levels of mauling. “Huh,” Spencer says, and leaves it at that.

“And for the record,” Ryan says, kicking Spencer’s shin lightly under the table, “he’s never actually tried to make me lunch.”

***

“Ryan’s fake barfing is going to make me barf for real,” Brendon says as he lets himself into Spencer’s hotel room. 

Spencer nods but doesn’t look up from the nest he’s built to deal with his intense but hopefully short-lived fake family emergency, aka: dicking around on YouTube for hours. He has his mom yelling at him in a minimized chat window because he won’t explain what’s going on and he has Back to the Future playing on the TV and it’s like sensory overload so that he doesn’t have to think about possibly being stuck in Ryan’s body _for the rest of his life_. He will welcome pretty much any distraction at this point. Brendon bellyflops on to the bed beside him and takes one of Spencer’s hands in his own.

“Spencer,” he says, but mostly just to say it, Spencer thinks.

Spencer clicks another YouTube video with his left hand which is awkward and unpractised on the trackpad. It’s Monty Python; he turns the volume up.

“How are you, really?” Brendon asks, leaning his head on Spencer’s shoulder so he can see the screen, too. “This is really weird, right?”

“Everything is weird today,” Spencer says, shrugging a little obnoxiously because of Brendon breathing on his ear. “You’re weird today.”

“Maybe a little,” Brendon concedes. “You always think I’m weird.”

“Maybe a little,” Spencer agrees, leaning his head on Brendon’s. Spencer doesn’t want to be Ryan forever but Ryan’s body has _advantages_ , like their hands clasped on Spencer’s chest. He squeezes Brendon’s hand because he can.

“I’m never going to stop holding your hand now that I know you’re a pro,” Brendon says, tipping his head back to mash his face into Spencer’s neck.

“You’re not holding my hand now,” Spencer says, because he’s a nitpicker.

“I am though,” Brendon says, squeezing back. “I really am.”

Spencer turns to look at Brendon’s face, entirely too close to really see much detail, but there’s sincerity, he thinks.

“I’m kicking ass at Intro to Spencer Cuddles 101, admit it,” Brendon continues. “I could challenge the exam right now and ace it, no problem.”

“There has to be an intro class?” Spencer asks.

“You can’t just dive right in there,” Brendon says, “or I would have done it years ago. It takes _finesse_ , Spencer, real academic study and practical labs.”

“The 102 class covers the sandwich arts,” Spencer says, nudging Brendon’s face with his own.

“Shut up and make me a sandwich?” Brendon says, laughing.

“Something like that,” Spencer says, mostly on autopilot, and the laptop hits the floor and that sucks, but nobody cares because then there is kissing.

_But only kissing!_ Spencer doesn’t want to have to know what Brendon and Ryan getting it on actually looks like for the rest of his life if he can help it. If this thing doesn’t reverse itself soon, though. Well. Who knows.


End file.
